OpinionWhy ‘royal confessionals’ like Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview threaten the British monarchy
- From Wallis Simpson to Princess Diana, royal confessionals are all too often treated as inappropriate, oversharing and narcissistic attacks on monarchy
- But stories that describe such critiques this way fail to recognise the importance of holding a powerful institution to account, says Laura Clancy
Royal confessionals have a long history. Marion Crawford, who wrote a book in 1950 about her time as nanny to the queen and her sister Margaret, was allegedly ostracised for selling her story without permission. Wallis Simpson, the American socialite for whom Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936, wrote a memoir The Heart Has its Reasons. In it, she sarcastically recalled the queen mother’s “justly famous charm” as a thinly-veiled critique.
Princess Diana’s BBC One Panorama interview in 1995 is perhaps the most iconic royal confessional. Diana told interviewer Martin Bashir about royal adultery, palace plots against her, and her deteriorating mental and physical health. Her infamous quote, “well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” referring to Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, is still remembered almost 26 years later. Sir Richard Eyre, a former director of the National Theatre, claimed that the queen called Diana’s decision to tell-all “frightful”.
